Doctor Strange sighting: New Avengers #59, doing astral plane recon with Doctor Voodoo, each redundant to the other
Credit where due: Love that Immonen art as always, the grey/black longcoat look for Doc isn't horrible, and Neilalien is curious enough to check in again to see if Osborn has someone interesting on his side to counter Strange and Voodoo mystically. The Marvel Magic Rogue's Gallery could use a bump.

Building A List: The Best Superhero Projects Of The Decade We're Leaving [Comics Reporter]
If you read this blog, your to-read list just doubled in length.

"The Ever Unreachable", long Ditko rant [Big Hollywood] [is follow-up to "Toyland"]
We're reaching a point where Neilalien is not that interested in being a soapbox-by-link for Ditko's Objectivist spoutings- but there's just enough about comics, the comics industry, and thoughts on 'the hero' here for now. For those much more interested in what's on the comic book page, you should be following BobH's Daily Ditko Twitter and Ditko Comics, both on a big content roll of Ditko art lately.

Depowering/Sorcerer-Supreme-Mantle-Losing Moments In Dr. Strange History

Previously in DSSS #48, Doctor Strange's long-time benefactors the Vishanti demanded that Doc fight for them in the Seven Spheres War against the Trinity of Ashes. Time and location of service: Five thousand years (it would be a simple matter to extend his lifespan (and he's got that thing when he defeated Death too)), on a far-away designated plane of combat. Unwilling to be drafted and leave the Earth plane unprotected for so long, Doc ballsily refuses.

But soon after, many Powers and Principalities (the Vishanti again, Cyttorak, Watoomb, etc.) come out of the woodwork demanding Doc's service in the War. So Doc recites the Emancipation Proclamation, and frees himself from their association.

Panel from the start of DSSS #50: Doc telling the Defenders the consequences of his actions: he can no longer call upon the Powers and Principalities in spells (so no more Crimson Bands of Cyttorak, Winds of Watoomb, etc.), so he is at vastly reduced power now, only able to employ mystic energies that he can directly manipulate.

Epilogue: Oops, the Vishanti in their eternal wisdom forgot (or maybe they didn't tell Doc to test him, to see if he would obey without knowing) (or maybe they sweetened the offer later) (or thank the Vishanti for a Warren Ellis retcon) to tell Doc that only about three months of Earth time would pass while he was 5,000 years away at the War, so his Earth-defense duties weren't ever really at risk. Doc eventually served in the War (for 5,000 years), and then later, his status quo in the Vishanti's good graces became apparent again.

But before all that happened: Doc's depowered state after DSSS #49 was too juicy for the bad guys to resist challenging, and he lost the Sorcerer Supreme mantle to Salome. We'll save that for the next installment in this series.

If the diagnosis to "the Doctor Strange Problem" is that he's too powerful, or if the natural evolution of the character is to gradually grow in power as writer after writer must top what came before until Doc requires occasional special depowering, or if his magic is too undefined or Stan Lee's incantation-prose no longer casts the spell it once did for readers- then there is a great idea here for depowering Doc and changing his magical system. But unfortunately, in Neilalien's opinion with the benefit of hindsight, it wasn't implemented as well as it could have. Neilalien is glad that Doc rebelled- that's the correct path- but the decision should have been shown as much tougher for Doc to make, he should have been shown as more torn. Both Doc and the Vishanti come off as needlessly ungrateful to each other and impulsive in a half-issue for the connection they were supposed to have. The Trinity of Ashes should have made a push to recruit Doc- or show Clea aligned with the Trinity- mix the chess pieces up, shake up the Marvel Magic Universe, make the Powers and Principalities less monolithic. Mine this idea for more stories. Neilalien would have avoided the whole Emancipation Proclamation brouhaha and "being no man or god's servant"- the Sorcerer Supreme mantle should be all about Service, to one's duties, protecting the innocent, etc. Eventually, Neilalien might have led Doc to a choice: either go fight in the War, or the Powers and Principalities will go off to fight it without him, which means their spells will not be available to Doc while they're gone. Doc chooses the latter, which leads to a depowered Doc looking for a new magical system- now you can have all the clean-slate magical-system and power-level changes you want. If your changes don't work out, if sales tank, then, Hey! The Vishanti are back from the War, it didn't take as long as we all thought it would, presto, Doc is back to his original status quo.

The Invincible Gene Colan, "a visual biography of one of the most brilliant, sublime and influential comic artists in the history of the genre" [Clifford Meth] [Aardwolf Publishing]

The superhero genre as expression of genuine creativity is pretty much dead [Permanent Damage]
Neilalien wrote a brilliant counter-essay, but then Lady Stilt-Man happened and made PD's point undeniable.

Neat interview with Irene Vartanoff, creator long-involved with romance comics [Sequential Crush] [via Comics Reporter]
"Sequential Crush is a blog devoted to preserving the memory of romance comic books and the creative teams that published them throughout the [0]1960s and [0]1970s."

List of Wonder Woman's paraphernalia [Wonder of Wonders]
Did not know the Invisible Jet is an alien life form.

Neilalien wonders if Blackest Night is the stock-market bubble-top for the death-as-storytelling/drama crutch in superhero comics [Bleeding Cool]

Marvel Q3 02009 numbers nuked as expected because of no movies right now; publishing down $2 million (6%: 34 million to $32 million) due to lower ad revenue, but book market up $1.6 million [ICv2] [Reuters]

The story of that cover: According to one version of the story, Gene Colan had drawn a different cover for the issue, but that it must have gotten lost in the mail for a while. Another story I read was that Colan thought he left it in a cab.

Whatever the case, it wasn't on hand when the "dreaded Deadline Doom" came about. Thus, they slapped together a composite, using Eternity as drawn by Ditko (the splash page from Strange Tales #146- Neil Editori-Al-ien) and a Colan Doc (the splash page from Strange Tales #178 - Neil Editori-Al-ien again) superimposed over a New York City skyline photo.

Troublemakin' Doctor Strange Covers

Strange Tales #139, Doc art by Marie Severin (Nick Fury image is the panel of the first page within, by Kirby). It always bothered Neilalien that (a) Doc is passively watching the action, and (b) that he's not viewing that action via mystical means, like the Orb.

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